I'm not sure why this isn't just called National Soda Day or something similar, but I guess there are some carbonated, caffeinated beverages that aren't soda (?).

Since soda drinkers usually have their favorite sodas and don't usually stray away from it (I'm a Diet Pepsi guy after a long affair/distraction with Diet Coke), maybe we can take this day to try a carbonated, caffeinated beverage that we've never tried or maybe one we haven't had in years. I'm going to have some Dr Pepper and see if it still tastes like it did the last time I had it, during the Reagan administration I believe.

I'm not a big fan of Dr. Pepper. It's way, way down on my list when it comes to beverages, right after carrot juice but right before Clamato. But I never thought about having it hot.

But apparently it's popular among some soda drinkers, or at least it was at one point, according to the ad on the right from the 1960s. How do you make Hot Dr. Pepper? Well, you put it in a pan and warm it up until it begins to steam. Then you pour it over slices of lemon. Hmmm...I'll have to try this, for science. I wonder if it works with Pepsi and Coke?

[via Boing Boing]

I grew up in New England, and I'm not sure what other families did, but we never called the nighttime meal "dinner." We always called it "supper." Now I always call it dinner. I don't know when it changed, but somewhere along the line it did.

AOL Food has a fun poll where they ask you what you called certain food things in your region. Did you call it dinner or supper (there's also an "other" option, though I'm not sure what that would be). Sprinkles or Jimmies or 100s and 1000s? Sub, Hero, or Hoagie? Soda, Pop, or Tonic?

If you had put money on the fact that Coke Zero would have fallen flat by now, as so many other remakes of favorite colas have in the past, there is a good chance that you would have lost your bet. Coca-Cola is planning to give the zero-calorie brand a big push this year to raise its profile and to try and make the brand a standard choice for cola drinkers ("[build] it into the next mega-brand," according to a company memo), not just an alternative to Coca Cola Classic.

The first part o the strategy is to sink a lot of money into the advertising budget. Coke is planning to spend $13 million on advertising during, and at, NCAA games alone, since its target audience is men up to age 45 or so who want a zero-calorie drink without the perceived girliness of Diet Coke. The company is also planning black packaging, football sponsorships and TV ads on "24" and MTV. To show exacty how serious they are about the brand, Coke is also actively recruiting restaurants to make Coke Zero a part of their soda fountain lineup. Wendy's and White Castle are two that have already agreed.

This may be the oddest article I've posted here, but hear me out.

I was a Pepsi drinker for years and years and years. Nothing really against Coke, it's just that I thought that Pepsi tastes differently, better, than Coke, so I always got Pepsi. Then, about five or six years ago, when I switched to drinking diet soda, I started drinking Coke. I don't know why. I think one night I went to the store to get some Pepsi, they were out of Diet, so I sent with Diet Coke instead. And for the past several years, out of taste and habit, I've bought Diet Coke.

Now I find myself going back and forth between the two. Yeah, yeah, I know, in America you're supposed to be a "Pepsi person" or a "Coke person," just like you're supposed to be a "Mac person" or a "PC person." (For the record, I'm a Mac guy.) It's not that I find that they taste the same. They don't. They taste very different, but I've learned to like them both.

Which is my very longwinded way of asking this question: I've noticed that Pepsi bottles often get some sort of film inside the bottle. Either condensation or some other scientific process I'd probably know if I paid attention in 7th grade science class. But I've noticed that Coke never gets this.

Anyone know why?

Today, the American Beverage Association and its members agreed to voluntarily remove sugary sodas from public schools across the country. Companies including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Cadbury Schweppes are all members of the ABA. Public high schools that still permit diet sodas will still be able to buy them for their campuses, and they will also be sold drinks that are considered have some nutritional value, juice, sports drinks and low-fat milk, though whole milk will no longer be offered because of its calorie content. Elementary and middle schools will only be sold unsweetened juice, low-fat milk and water. Part of the reason that the soda companies have agreed to this deal, which was made in conjunction with the William J. Clinton Foundation, is that on-campus soda sales make up a very small percentage of their overall sales, not to mention that a voluntary withdrawal looks better, from a PR perspective, than being banned.

 

That infamous snap, crackle and pop that Rice Krispies make comes from air escaping from the tiny puffed grains of rice, according to a brief article posted yesterday on LiveScience.com. When the rice grains are toasted at high temperatures, they expand, creating lots of little air-filled pockets. When the milk hits the cereal, it puts pressure on the puffed rice, thus forcing the air out. At least, that's the theory. Surprisingly, no one has ever actually funded a study. The cereal science buffs out there may also remember a post about why Cheerios floating in milk tend to cling to one another. LiveScience covered that one as well.

The popular "un-cola," 7-Up, is now one hundred percent natural. Cadbury Schweppes put the beverage through a slight reformulation to remove an artificial preservative in the drink. A spokesperson for the company said that they expect sales to increase once the ad campaign publicizing the change kicks off next month, as consumers are more interested than ever in healthy products. The TV spots will show cans of 7-Up as fruits and vegetables, being picked from trees or dug from the ground, but the company will not claim that the drink has any specific health benefits.

[Image USA Today]

 

I have to admit that I had mixed feelings about tasting Coca-Cola Blak. After I mentioned its release a few weeks ago, the amount of hype seemed to go through the roof. People loved the idea or people hated the idea; there was no middle ground. I assumed that I would not really like it before I tried it. After all, a drink that was hyped as much as Blak couldn't be good - could it? The thing that I failed to take into consideration is that I love coke and I love coffee. I also really liked Coca Cola Blak.

Let me say that it is definitely not a soda for everyone. I almost felt like I was cupping a coffee, which is the process where you sip and sniff and seek out all the underlying flavors in a sample of coffee. The coffee flavor was strong enough that I automatically looked for flavor notes, which I found. The drink tastes quite strongly of caramel, or perhaps burnt sugar without any bitterness, and there are similar fruity notes to the ones I like in my coffees. There was a good amount of bubbles - not so much as to be distracting, but Blak still fizzed like mad when poured into a glass. The only negative is that it is quite sweet. I wouldn't mind a small reduction in sweetness, but overall, they did pretty well with this drink.

Did it taste like coca cola? Not really, but it did taste good.

[Photo by Nicole Weston]

A few months back, I posted about a map that showed regional names for soft drinks: pop, soda, etc. Well, I recently came across a similar map designed to show how people in different parts of the U.S. refer to their long sandwiches. The map is part of a larger project called the Dialect Survey, created by a linguistics professor at Harvard. Other regional food pronunciations include caramel (do you use three syllables or two?), mayonnaise (man-aze or may-uh-naze?), pecan (pee-cans are for truckers), and lots more. I also found the alternate names for milkshakes pretty interesting (cabinet? velvet?).

[Via Fark]

Coca-Cola's newest drink, Coca-Cola Blak, is scheduled to be officially released on April 3rd. The drink, which we have mentioned before, is a blend of classic Coke and coffee "essence." The company is trying to market the uniqueness of the product, but similar blends have been released in the past and have failed.

In 1994, for example, Pepsi began to test market a soda called Pepsi Kona. It tasted more like coffee than soda and consumers were not thrilled. Back in 1995, Starbucks partnered with Pepsi and began to market a coffee product called Mazagran. It was a lightly carbonated iced coffee beverage and it, too, flopped. Customers were willing to try it once, based on the Starbucks name alone, but the drink was not enough to encourage repeat sales. The question is whether it was the carbonation or the coffee that put consumers off the original drink. Since coffee sales have boomed, one can only assume that the combination of coffee and carbonation has not previously been held in high regard by consumers.

I picked this soda, Journey's John Barleycorn's Root Beer, after reading the ingredient label. It said it contained flavoring from malted barley and wintergreen. In addition to both being unusual ingredients in root beer, the two seemed like an unlikely pairing in general.

The first thing I noticed was the relative lack of carbonation in the root beer; it was quite syrupy, actually. The flavor was unusual. The malted barley came through immediately, making it seem much more like beer than root beer, and it finished with the very fresh wintergreen flavor. There was an aftertaste of malt. It really concentrated on the barley/mint combination instead of playing up the spicy sassafras flavor I ordinarily enjoy in root beer. There’s a reason that it’s not a good idea to wait until after you’ve finished you beer to have a breath mint and not have it during: not the best flavor combination.